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Anonymous vs. Israel

A graffiti of Guy Fawkes mask, symbol of Anonymous, is pictured on April 6, 2013 in Florence. (Gabriel Bouys / AFP)

Israeli hackers, under the name Israeli Elite Strike Force (@IsraeliElite) waged a cyberwar against Anonymous' anti-Israel hack campaign, #OpIsrael. In response to Anonymous' escalation of attacks on April 7, Israeli Elite disabled dozens of sites within Pakistan, Iran, Syria and several north African states.

Despite reports of successful hacking, Israeli government officials appeared to be underwhelmed by the results of #OpIsrael's escalation.

Yitzhak Ben Yisrael of Israel's National Cyber Bureau stated in an interview with the Associated Press (AP):

"So far it is as was expected, there is hardly any real damage," Ben Yisrael said. "Anonymous doesn't have the skills to damage the country's vital infrastructure. And if that was its intention, then it wouldn't have announced the attack ahead of time. It wants to create noise in the media about issues that are close to its heart," he said.guardian.co.uk

Ofir Gendelman, the current spokesperson to the Arab media for Israel's Prime Minister, posted the National Cyber Bureau's comments regarding the cyber attacks on his Facebook.

The actions that were carried out focused on distributed denial of service attacks, the defacement of Israeli websites and the publication of citizens' data. During the attack, there was no publication of leaked data on any notable or potentially highly damaging scale. An integral part of the attackers' efforts included false claims regarding successes.facebook.com

April 7, the day of escalation, also happens to be Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day. Some were bothered that the two events were occurring simultaneously.